Navigate:

Barack Obama's Keystone pipeline dilemma: Why not punt?

'It’s a hell of a dilemma,' said an environmentalist who doesn't expect movemeent soon. |
AP Photo
Close

“It will be the shocker of this administration if EPA signs off on this,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), who opposes the current proposed route for the pipeline because it crosses through Nebraska’s Sandhills region and a key drinking water aquifer.

But even a delay in a decision would bother labor union supporters of the pipeline who say they have waited long enough.

Text Size

-

+

reset

“I don’t see how you don’t place it as a top priority,” said Bret Caldwell, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters “The sooner the decision is made, the sooner people go to work and that’s got to be the top priority."

“The president’s having a hard enough time with Congress in getting his jobs program through," Caldwell added.

“I don’t think he can delay it another year, I don’t think there’d be a reason to delay it another year,” Johanns said. “I just think this has gone on for three years and there’s a point in which they do owe everybody an answer.”

Unions backing the pipeline include Laborers International Union, the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the AFL-CIO and the International Union of Operating Engineers. The AFL-CIO overall has not taken a position on the project. A couple of unions — namely the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union — oppose the pipeline and represent more than 300,000 U.S. workers.

The opposition to the Keystone pipeline has attracted large numbers of young voters — which should be further evidenced by the more than 6,000 protesters who have signed up to form a human fence around the White House Sunday.

Obama won 66 percent of the under-30 voter in 2008, the biggest disparity between young voters and other age groups in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972, according to the Pew Research Center for People & the Press.

"If young people are watching and care deeply about these issues and they’re disappointed, that will affect the campaign's ability to get those young people as involved and enthused as they were four years ago," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune told reporters recently that Obama’s decision on the pipeline would “have a very big impact” on how the nation’s largest environmental group funnels resources toward congressional races rather than the race for the White House.

One factor in Obama’s favor is that both the unions and the environmental groups have a larger disdain toward the available suite of Republican presidential candidates.

"Clearly no one who cares about the environment wants a global warming denier sitting the in the White House," Karpinski said. "Having said that, people have to decide where they put their biggest attention and resources."

“Our members are smart enough to know that it’s not all the president’s fault; he’s trying,” Owens said. “So we’re still hopeful that our folks won’t check out and they’ll get mad enough because they know who the true villains are.”

Meanwhile, TransCanada is warning that failure of the Obama administration to greenlight the project soon might force the company to withdraw the project and look at other alternatives to route it through Canada and send the oil to other places like China.

Hofmeister thinks this is an empty threat because an alternative crossing all the way over to British Columbia, for example, would face the wrath of Canadian environmental and native groups.

“TransCanada, the industry, have zero leverage on this topic,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 12:47 p.m. on November 4, 2011.

INVESTIGATE FERC! They have no consideration for Landowners Protection Rights!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why is the White House hiding all this???????????? Not only are they destroying these lands but also attempting to take thousands of miles of shoreline in the country. Legislation is stalled in committee. For what reason????????????

More leading from behind, sounds like. This is just one more example how Obama doesn't think things through. Isn't Keystone "infrastructure"? And infrastructure that the Federal government doesn't have to pay for? How many unemployed union construction workers would this employ? How much lower would our cost of petroleum be? How much less dependent on OPEC sources would the U.S. be?

Promise everyone contradictory things and then reality contradicts his promises. So, disappoint friends, antagonize everyone else, and don't put Americans back to work building infrastructure. Delay? What are the costs? To the unemployed? To U.S. tax revenues? To the U.S. balance of payments?

Obama simply isn't good at his job. He's foolish, inept, and incompetent.

Obama, the Chicago Socialist doesn't have the DNA to create jobs here in the USA. The only jobs his administration applauded about a year ago were McD jobs paying about $8 an hour when McDonalds announced the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Obama would be wise to approve the XL project and now because Americans want jobs of this type that pay well. Hey, what's wrong with making $20 an hour working on a pipeline project vs $8 an hour. Americans need to rise up and insist this project get pushed along by the White House.

Obama failed to negotiate the PEACE in Iraq by making sure we got little to no oil. The Chinese and Russians got it all without firing a shot. All we got back from a trillion dollars spent was the body bags of our kids. Now we have to build NEW bases in Kuwait because they threw us out of Iraq. Some negotiator this guy Obama is!

The same will happen in Libya. The USA paid 80% of NATO's COSTS. So we PAID for MOST of the war effort, and now the French and British will get most of the good "sweet crude" oil from Africa's largest oil pool in Libya.

Obama WANTS to do the same with this pipeline. He doesn't want us to have the oil, which we MUST HAVE for the next 20 years or so until alternative solutions come on line at a price and quantity to sustain our economy. And he has a whole bunch of followers now who are being told, "You will never own your own home, never have a car, and have to live in a citry." Their idea of the pastoral countryside will be your local park. They don't think we need this oil either.

As I see it, if the Canadians don't build the pipeline South to us, they will build it WEST to a Canadian Port, where China will be the big beneficiary of all this oil.

The most generous and stupidest people alive on the planet today appear to be AMERICANS.

As POGO said, "We have met the enemy and it is us!"

Have you had enough yet?

It starts LOCALLY. GO VOTE if you have a local election coming up this month. Stop the WASTE and BAD DECISIONS LOCALLY FIRST. You CAN do something about that local situation in your City or Town or State RIGHT NOW! Teachers firemen and police laid off where you live? ? THose are all LOCAL DECISIONS, and some elected local official decided they were NOT NEEDED. If you disagree, go VOTE in someone else who can make the hard choices!

Stop complaining! GO VOTE IN YOUR LOCAL ELECTIONS! My view is the rest of them will hear the message LOUDLY AND CLEARLY after the local votes are counted this time. And if you are in Chicagoland, "vote early and often."

The best solution is to build a refinery in Montana, just across the Canadian border. That way we won't have to suffer the worst toxic sludge being piped all the way across the United States. Building such a long pipeline that is bound to spring leaks over time (if not from the get-go) is an environmentally short-sighted and irresponsible solution. If there is truly that huge amount of oil in Alberta, a new refinery in Montana would be a busy job-providing center of industry for decades, if not centuries, to come.

Funny a 2 page article all about the politics of the situation and nothing about how this decision will affect the country pro or con. He's the President for God's sake he was elected to lead not pander.

This is such ********. America is facing a jobs crisis and is in desperate need of a modern infrastructure. Here is an $8 billion project that will generate 20,000 direct jobs and you have Obama playing the delay game. All to suck up to his elite environmental constituency.

Failure to approve the Keystone Project in a timely manner will once again prove that the Obama Administration doesn't care about jobs!!

“He wins both ways by deferring the decision, and he ultimately wins the loyalty and support of the American people by deciding in favor of the project,” added Hofmeister,

------------------

So if it's such a necessity for America, how does it show leadership by refusing to act in America's interest simply because of his own self-interest in trying to win an election?

How does intentionally lying to his eco groups by putting it off (they're crazy, not entirely desnse, they know they're being played) garner enthusiastic support at the ballot box?

And politically, how does allowing this issue to hang over the election help? All it does is allow every side to scream about it, futhering the obvious truth that Obama is not a leader, not interested in America's best interest, and only furthering his own political agenda and ideology.

So deferring the decision is not good if you're a supporter of the pipeline.

So deferring the decision is not good if you're against it.

So deferring the decision is not good if you're trying to portray yourself as a leader of tough decisions.

And deferring the decision is not good if you've got a political clue......

“It’s a hell of a dilemma,” said one environmentalist who believes Obama will delay a decision for a while. “Clearly it would be in his benefit not to have this as a hot potato in his reelect.”

I'm not sure if Pres. Bush ever exihibited a level of incompetence like I se with this president. He can't make decisions and when he knows he must make one he is deterred by politics. How in the world did this man-child ever get elected!

Failure to approve Keystone would not be treason, but it would be a betrayal of the country nonetheless. As for BHO's political dilemma, I believe one of his predecessors cautioned that you can't fool all the people all the time. His time is up.